


you’re home and i don’t want to leave

by wildbriars (persephonie)



Category: Little Women (2019), Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Alive Beth, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, F/M, Mutual Pining, Regret, Relationship Study, Reminiscing, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:42:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28556316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephonie/pseuds/wildbriars
Summary: Laurie takes up a teaching position in New York, and reunites with Jo in the best—or perhaps, the worst—of circumstances.
Relationships: Theodore Laurence/Josephine March
Comments: 16
Kudos: 73





	you’re home and i don’t want to leave

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is heavily inspired by the 2019 film. Also, Bergamot, the fictional college that this fic is set in, is based on the very real Barnard College, a private women's liberal arts college in New York City.

Somehow Jo had always known she would see him again.

One aimless Tuesday afternoon she receives a needlessly long message from Marmee, detailing in length of Meg expecting, another boy this time, and of Beth’s piano recital that had gone far better than she’d hoped despite the rest of them having no doubt it would go just _excellently_ , and of Amy’s—well, Amy is doing the best she can, really, with all that’s been going on.

Jo rereads the brief paragraph once, twice, and by the third time, the words _divorce_ and _devastated_ have almost melded together. And then, with no additional frame of reference, _Laurie has left for New York._

She swallows. Laurie is leaving Concord. Laurie is coming to New York.

Laurie is coming _here_. To _her_.

As if stubbornly pushing the thought away, Amy’s large, blue eyes appear in her mind. Jo hasn’t seen her family in almost two long years, and apart from several hour-long FaceTime sessions, her last real memory of Amy had been of the bright Christmas morning when she’d announced to the room that she and Laurie were husband and wife, and Jo had felt a strange, liverish feeling crawl up from the pit of her stomach. She’d packed for New York that very evening. She’d told herself it was simply from shock; that seeing Laurie a married man had caught her off guard, nothing more. But deep down a small part of her had selfishly hoped Laurie would remain alone as she had, and they would meet each other halfway.

Amy and Laurie married in Paris where their love had first blossomed, not quite secretly, under the watchful eye of their Aunt March. And with nothing—and no one—else in their way, he’d marched her to the nearest chapel and sealed it with a kiss.

It was all _dreadfully_ romantic, and Jo’d had to bite back laughter. As if she knew what that meant.

When they returned, Jo had embraced her sister, and then Laurie. As he held her then, Jo’s mind wandered back to so many years ago, back to the both of them in the field behind her family home, the heavy weight of silence hovering in the air, and the memory of it clung to her so tightly that she almost couldn’t breathe, until Laurie finally pulled away and asked quietly, “Are you happy for me, Jo?”

“Of course, Teddy,” she’d replied, her smile stiff and foreign on her face. “I’m very happy for you both.”

And Jo was sure she’d meant it, too. Whatever emotions that had gripped her before dissipated when she saw Amy glowing with pride, carrying her head high as she had since her childhood, and Jo was truly happy for her, for the woman Amy has grown into.

Jo thinks of Amy then, and a swell of heartache washes over her. Amy feels so strongly, so deeply, just as Jo does. She thinks of Beth with her arms fiercely wrapped around Amy, squeezing the sadness out of her little body, moulding her into the brave, confident woman she had been that very Christmas morning. Beth’s fingers are soft and delicate but she can carve joy out of anything, and Jo is certain that Amy can get through this, just as she’d had—and Jo shudders at the distant memory—that day at the frozen lake, so many years ago.

“How long are you planning to stay here?”

The voice startles her from her trance. Jo looks up from her computer. She forgot that she’d left her office door ajar as she always does during her consultation hours, and here is Catherine from the English department, poking her head in. It’s only then that Jo realises it’s well past six o’clock. She mumbles a quiet _five more minutes_ and turns back to the message, rereading it once more, trying to find hidden clues where there aren’t any.

“By the way,” Catherine continues, “did you hear about the new recruit? They say he’ll be teaching art history. The poor sap.”

“Art history,” Jo echoes. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence. Certainly there’s no way it could be—

“Yeah, a Mr. Laurence.” Catherine scrunches her nose, and Jo is grateful that she can’t hear the sharp breath she’d just drawn. “Sounds like a chemistry-teacher type of guy, if you ask me.”

Jo forces a smile, and thankfully her colleague leaves soon after. Jo is hesitant to call her a friend; there are very few that she’d consider _friends_ here at Bergamot, except maybe Professor Bhaer from the Foreign Languages department, but even then she’d avoided him well enough when he started paying a little too much attention to how she’d taken her coffee in the morning or knew her evening routine too well, knew that after her classes were done she would saunter into the library just to feel like one of the students cramming for their assignments.

She’d told Bhaer what she had told Laurie too, the first time; that she would not marry. Since her days of childhood, it had grown from a mere promise to a fact, just as the sky is blue and the Earth orbits around the Sun.

With the thought of Laurie coming here, no doubt enshrouded in heartache and misery, Jo has never been more sure of the fact.

* * *

“No,” Jo says, pressing the phone to her ear. “No, he didn’t say anything to me.”

Amy had spent the last hour half-talking, half-sobbing into the phone, and Jo listened quietly, feeling the pained cries of her sister rather than hearing them. Divorce is one of the many reasons why Jo is firm in her rejection of marriage. It’s a known fact that half of all marriages end in divorce, and with Jo’s temper and deep sense of self, she’s certain in her case it would happen as soon the honeymoon were over.

Once Amy calmed—and Jo could hear Beth’s soothing voice by her side loud enough through the phone—she had asked, almost in a whisper, “Did he tell you he was going to Bergamot?”

Jo was stunned by the question at first. Her entire family knows that she hadn’t spoken to Laurie, not _really_. Not since the day after Meg’s wedding, when he’d passionately, _impulsively_ thrusted the Question at her, so wild and frantic that it had felt more like a weapon than a want, and she’d had her answer ready to retaliate.

She’d said no. Laurie had bared his heart and his soul to her, and though she could tell it had been a long time coming—and God knows why he’d chosen the day after her sister’s wedding to pose it to her—she’d said no.

Even now, she doesn’t regret it. She stands by her words; they would have driven each other mad, they would have grown to resent each other if they’d gotten married then. But now… now at twenty-five, with her own wealth and—to a certain degree—a name for herself, she can’t help but picture a nameless shape of a person next to her sometimes, during the lonelier nights when the rain beats senselessly at her window and she’s agonisingly aware of just how empty her apartment is. And sometimes, the shape has the same curly black hair and small hands that she’d spent her childhood scuffling with.

Sometimes the shape speaks softly to her and it says, with unwavering resolve, _I love you, Jo. I love you, Jo._

Beth’s voice pulls Jo back to the present. “She’s a wreck, Jo. I don’t—I don’t know…”

Jo swallows. Amy is a woman now, so grown since the days when she’d burned things out of spite, and she began using her words to fight rather than her rashness. But Amy is still her baby sister, and when she sorrows, so does Jo. “Don’t leave her side, Beth. She needs you.”

“I won’t.”

Jo hears shuffling in the background, and after a moment Amy is back at the phone. Her voice is no longer shaky. “I’m okay. Don’t you worry about me. You know Marmee would kill me if I dragged you from your work to come home when I have her and Beth and Meg right here—”

“Don’t be stupid, Amy,” Jo says, shaking her head despite herself, “you know I’d fly back home as soon as you asked me to.”

Amy laughs. It’s quiet and a little sad, but it’s still a laugh. “I know, Jo.”

* * *

Jo loves New York. It’s far too big and there are far too many people and everyone is so busy and loud and utterly engrossed in their lives, and Jo can slip quietly in between, an anonymous observer among a sea of strangers.

Jo takes the subway to work. It’s a small comfort, going through her daily morning routine before she begins her day at Bergamot: catching the early train so she’s able to sit by the window, watching as the first light goes by in a motion blur, and getting in line for coffee at her favourite shop at the corner of 116th Street and Broadway, before strolling through the large gates of Bergamot College.

There’s a week before the fall semester begins, and during this time Jo only goes to Bergamot to discuss with the rest of the English department about the new syllabus, so she can linger for a little longer in the coffee shop before making her way to the college.

As she waits for her coffee, she hears someone clear their throat behind her. She moves slightly to her left, thinking it’s the person’s turn to pick up their order, but no one appears beside her.

“Jo,” says the voice, and it makes her jump. “Jo.”

She turns slowly, dread filling her chest first before it’s quickly replaced with joy as soon as she sees the face. He looks the same. No, he looks younger somehow—as though the divorce had taken years from his lifetime in the opposite way—with his curls a little unkempt, and his smile a little timid. She blinks her eyes nervously, unsure what to do or say, and while her mind is scrambled, her body reacts first.

“Teddy,” she breathes, staggering forward and pulling him fiercely into her arms. Her hands clamber around his lean frame, and the familiarity of him washes over her. She feels the backs of her eyelids pricking. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Hey,” he says, laughing. He slips his arm around her waist and rests it against the small of her back. “So, I take it you’re not angry with me?”

“Angry? Why would I…” Jo shakes her head. There’s a pang in her chest as she recites the next words, from memory rather than from her heart. “Oh, Teddy. I know neither you nor my sister ever meant to hurt each other. Amy forgives you, and so do I.”

He doesn’t reply at first, only looks at her with a strange expression in his eyes. “That sounds…” He trails off and shakes his head. He eases his lips into a small smile. “So, friends then?”

“Of course.” Jo’s own smile falters. “Always.”

He follows her to her table. The coffee shop is a little cramped and noisy with the morning rush, so Jo has to lean forward to hear Laurie speak. Jo notices that there are dark shadows around his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept soundly in a long time, but his eyes glint brightly in the sunlight streaming through the window.

They discuss Bergamot, and Jo proudly announces the required reading for her classes; she teaches literature _and_ creative writing, and she goes on excitedly about the potential she sees in her students. She loves teaching, as it turns out, despite her complaints so long ago about having to tutor both Beth and Amy at home after school. Her first book had made the Pulitzer Prize finalists recently, and Laurie congratulates her. She tells him she’s working on her next book.

Laurie’s eyes never leave her the entire time she’s speaking. He hadn’t prepared himself to listen to Jo talk so animatedly, so full and bursting with energy. The home he’d shared with Amy had been far too quiet.

“Sounds like a dream, Jo,” he says when she’s done. “I’m glad. It seems you’ve made something of yourself here. I feel honoured to be graced by your presence.”

“Teddy, don’t.” There’s a faint blush on her cheeks. “I’m sure you’ll do excellently with the girls in art history. Bet your grandfather’s proud of you.”

“He was pleasantly surprised, yes.” Laurie casts his eyes to his coffee. “But unfortunately it doesn’t pardon the rest of my failures.”

Jo feels the twist of his misery in her chest. The rings around his eyes reveal themselves to her, darker and more spent than they’d first appeared. Studying him now, Jo realises that she’d never really gotten to know Laurie-Amy’s-husband. He'd announced himself on that bright Christmas morning, and Jo had fled within a few hours without taking a second look. Here in New York, he looks a lot like Laurie-the-boy-next-door. Like her Teddy, wearing her clothes. Laurie who had never taken Amy’s love, and instead still has his hands wrapped tightly round Jo’s nonexistent one.

“I’m sorry, Teddy.” She’s not exactly sure what it is she’s sorry for. “I really am.”

He finally meets her eyes. His expression is inscrutable. “So am I, Jo.”

* * *

At Bergamot, Laurie latches on to Jo, the same way he’d had with Meg at the Moffats’, and with Amy at every engagement party they’d gone to. He’s not yet used to being alone in public and he’s not eager to make new friends, especially not as a divorcé. The pain is still fresh, the word still sour in his mouth and his mind.

So he clings on to what he’s always known: books on art history that he’d plucked from his home library; letters from his grandfather detailing his mundane moments in Concord (he’d half-joked to his grandfather that he wouldn’t respond to any e-mails, so don’t bother, and now he receives actual handwritten letters instead); and Jo.

They pick up from where they’d left off; from before Amy, before Meg’s wedding. Back to when they were just Jo and Laurie without complexity, going to the theatre together and making fun of the actors on the ride home, or picking the best apples in the orchard behind Aunt March’s home, or playing hide-and-seek in Laurie’s enormous greenhouse. Drinking in each other’s company in the rare stretches of silence.

Since their childhood, Jo has mellowed and Laurie disillusioned, so the silence stretches longer and the gaps in their conversations more awkward. But still they try at it, because it is all they know.

They have lunch in the faculty lounge. It’s usually empty because most of the staff either have lunch in their offices or go out in groups, and since neither Jo nor Laurie prefer the company of anyone but each other, they’ve created a routine of sorts, drifting to their usual table and uncovering their lunch together. Sometimes, like this very Monday, they trade fruits.

“Strawberries?” Jo offers, already eyeing the pickled plums on Laurie’s platter.

“Fine,” he says, “but that’s two strawberries for one plum.”

She grins. “Deal.”

It’s when he unloads the pickled plums onto Jo’s plate that she sees it. Bright and gleaming in the soft autumn light, the silver stands out starkly against his pale fingers. Her heart stutters at the sight of it.

“Teddy,” Jo begins, but she’s not sure how to continue. “Is that—?” 

Laurie follows her gaze, and nearly drops his fork as he flinches. “Oh. Yeah.” He pulls at the ring with greater difficulty than he expects to. Of course it decides to be stuck on his finger at this very moment. Eventually, he gives up. “Sorry, it—it felt weird, not having anything there.”

“It’s okay, Teddy.” Jo’s voice is soft. She reaches across the table to pat his hand. It lingers for longer than she means to. She can’t find her voice, all of a sudden. “Really, it’s—I’m glad, you kept it, all these years.”

“Jo… of course.” Laurie smiles at her easily. “This was my first real treasure, you know. I couldn’t part with it.”

“Sentimental,” Jo teases.

It comes back to her in brief images in her mind. Meg eagerly rushing into the car to go to the party at the Moffats’, Jo ribbing at her mercilessly, reminding her not to risk it all for the first man who dances with her, unless she wanted to get knocked up and marry at sixteen, and amid all the noise and bustle, Jo absentmindedly getting down on one knee and bestowing her ring onto Laurie’s already outstretched hands.

Then later, after Meg finally _did_ marry, Laurie perhaps getting a little too swept up in the moment and asking Jo, at not-quite-twenty, to make him the happiest man alive by being his wife.

He’d worn her ring as he asked it, as if they were married already and all he needed was her word that she could not give.

* * *

Jo and Laurie go to Catherine’s farewell party together. By now, most of the faculty have seen the two of them walking out of Bergamot at the end of the day, shoulder to shoulder, often enough not to question the nature of their relationship. And as many do in any educational institution, secondary or tertiary, they speculate.

Catherine had pried into it one day to ask, to tease, to dig, and Jo only gave her a curt reply, _Laurie is a family friend. We’ve known each other since we were children._

Her prying didn’t stop; she would often drop sudden remarks like ‘why don’t you just make things official’, and ‘it’s obvious that there’s a spark’ and, the one Jo never could quite let go, ‘he looks at you with this kind of wistful expression, are you sure nothing went on between you two?’.

“Been reading too many period romances, Catherine? I thought you weren’t going to let those get to your head,” Jo had shot back, and then felt immediately guilty when Catherine dropped the bomb that she would be leaving Bergamot in two weeks.

So now they’re celebrating her farewell at a bar on Park Avenue, and Catherine has had too much to drink, and she’s been giving Jo the side-eye every time she laughs at something Laurie had said.

“Theodore,” Catherine says, her words slightly slurred, “who would you rather take home tonight? Me, or Josephine?”

Laurie shifts in his bar stool uncomfortably as the pairs of eyes around him pressed into him. Jo feels an annoyance growing within her; it’s no secret that while Catherine had been prodding Jo for answers about her relationship with Laurie, she had been harbouring a small crush on the art history teacher. She’s just doing this to get a rise out of her.

“It’s raining terribly outside,” Laurie comments. Jo stifles a laugh. “So, I doubt I would be able to make it home at all.”

“Catherine,” Jo says, “I think you’ve had a little too much to drink than the rest of us.”

“Well, then drink as _much_ with me.” Catherine pouts. “Theodore, won’t you drink with me?”

Jo and Laurie clink their glasses against Catherine’s, who starts singing _Summer Wine_ completely out of tune. The other teachers from the English and Foreign Languages departments join along. It’s past eleven o’clock and the bar is buzzing with laughter, and Jo has never felt such a strong urge to disappear. She exchanges an equally agitated look with Laurie, and with a nod they both slip away from the crowd and through the doors of the bar.

“Thank god,” Jo mutters, and Laurie laughs. “I thought I was going to die back there, and you’d have to break the news to my family…” Jo stops herself. “Teddy, I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

“It’s okay, Jo.”

The rain _is_ terrible, and even on pavement Jo can feel her shoes getting soaked. She knows the subway is going to be completely full, and she can’t imagine the nightmare for Laurie, who lives across the city, about fourteen stops away.

“You’re not thinking of going home in this weather, are you, Teddy?” Jo’s voice is impossibly small and far away. She doesn’t say, _Don’t go home just yet._ She doesn’t say, _Please stay._ Instead: “It’s pouring. I live just around the corner on Broadway—I’ll let you crash at my place tonight.”

Laurie’s smile is hesitant, but the rain and the wine drown out his thoughts. “Thanks, Jo.”

The rain grows louder when they reach Jo’s apartment. It’s a good thing, Jo thinks, so they don’t have to force some sort of conversation to fill the silence. She can’t remember the last time she’d been alone with him like this.

She thinks of the first time they’d met, the fire casting a warm glow on his face as he beamed at her and asked her to dance; and the time she’d helped him hide from his grandfather in his library, the two of them pressed up in the narrow space between the bookshelves; and the time he’d come to see her home after a night at the theatre, where he lingered for a little longer on her front porch, twisting his fingers together shyly, perhaps wanting to kiss her hand—like the perfect gentleman he’d thought himself to be—but not finding the courage to do so.

They’d been children then, and he’d harboured a love for her so large and profound that she never bothered to take the time to understand it.

Jo still doesn’t understand it, but at present she feels her nerves building up inside her, rushing to grip her heart and shake it loose. She swallows. _Don’t_ , she scolds herself. _Don’t do that. It’s Teddy. It’s just Teddy…_

 _It’s just Teddy_ , she thinks, as she watches him take up space in her tiny apartment living room while the rain continues to beat senselessly at her window, and she sees clearly now the name forming around the shape that lingers next to her in the night.

 _It’s just Teddy_ , she thinks, as he stares back at her, eyes widened and cheeks flushed from the wine, curls wild from when they’d run through the pouring rain and into her apartment, and Jo’s rattling heart comes to a sudden stop.

 _It’s just Teddy_ , she thinks, as she feels herself draw closer to him, like a moth to a flame, stopping close enough that she can feel his breath on her hairline, low and uneven so that the rain sounds like a whisper from ten blocks away.

“Teddy…” Jo hears herself saying. She’s not quite aware of her own voice. Her gaze drops to his mouth, soft and full and _not hers_. She sees her fingers stretch out before her, torn between wanting to touch him or to take his hand and finally give him the answer he’d desired from her all those years ago, half a decade too late.

Her hand freezes mid-air. At least a minute passes by before Laurie finally says, “I’ll take the couch.”

Jo nods sharply, the silence of her apartment pulling her back to reality. “Yes, let me set it up for you.”

“Thanks again, Jo.”

“Of course.”

It’s 2.50 AM when Jo fiddles with her phone again. She turns on her side for the twelfth time since she got into bed, the steady thrum of her heart as loud as it had been when she and Laurie first entered her apartment that night, her mind buzzing and fully aware of his presence in her space, _here_. With her, yet not with her.

Lying awake as the last of the midnight rain pecks at her window, Jo becomes fully aware of her feelings for Laurie. It’s as if seeing him again in New York brought them properly into view, as if Jo is seeing it all for the first time: Laurie offering her his arm outside the theatre, and Jo punching him in the shoulder in response; Laurie cradling the pieces of Jo’s broken heart as she mourns the loss of her long hair; Laurie begging in the open field, _Say yes and let’s be happy together_ , and Jo pushing him further and further away because she just couldn’t— _wouldn’t_ —understand.

Jo sits up on her bed. If the rain lets up, she will go out to the balcony for some fresh air. Which also means she’ll have to cross the living room.

She opens her bedroom door to find Laurie on the other side with his hand raised, his knuckles jutting out as if to knock. She wonders how long Laurie had been standing there. His shirt is half-unbuttoned and Jo can just barely see his freckles at the base of his neck, which Jo had once upon a time described as _capital, very becoming of a growing boy_. His hair is a tangled mess, and his dark eyes soften when they meet hers.

“Teddy,” she says, her voice unrecognisable even to herself. “Are you alright?”

“Couldn’t sleep. The rain…” Laurie shifts his gaze. “I’m sorry, I don’t—I don’t know why I—”

“Neither could I,” she murmurs. “Come in, then.”

Laurie peers into the room, hesitating for just a moment before stepping in. Her room is too small for the both of them, so she guides him to her bed. The rain has suddenly picked up again, and the moon is shrouded so it’s too dark to see each other.

They climb into her small bed effortlessly, Jo tucking her head into the crook of his neck, Laurie resting his hand against the curve of her shoulder. They’re pressed up together the same way they’d been once long ago, back when Laurie was briefly into astronomy and he’d heard news of a shooting star, and bashfully asked Jo to stargaze with him and they’d curled up together, side by side, in his old sleeping bag in the field behind her home. (Long before he would propose to her, before everything between them would change forever.)

The memory of it darts across her mind like the shooting star they eventually caught that night, and Jo—

Jo is not prepared to live the rest of her life without him.

“I love you, Teddy.” The words slip from her, in a whisper, into the dark. “I love you, Teddy.”

She hears a swift, sudden intake of breath. “I never stopped loving you, Jo.”

* * *

“Meg,” Jo says into the phone, “I did a bad thing.”

The sun is too bright, and her voice is hoarse, and she can’t hide the desperate way she’s saying her sister’s name. Jo has never in her life drunk as much as she had at the bar last night, and this morning she blames Catherine for her pounding head.

Laurie had left while she was still asleep, with nothing more than a text that read, _Home. Thanks again for letting me stay last night._

Jo wishes she could forget last night.

“What happened? What did you do?” She hears Meg take a deep breath. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Jo says. She misses just how dramatic Meg can be sometimes, and hearing her sister working herself into a frenzy brings Jo a strange sort of comfort. “Meg, I… I had Laurie stay over last night.”

There’s a pause, a long one, and it makes Jo nervous. Finally, “Are you two…?”

“No, of _course_ not,” Jo bursts. “I wouldn’t do that. Not to Amy—”

“You didn’t give me a chance to speak,” Meg says quietly. There’s no venom in her voice, yet Jo feels the guilt spreading through her chest anyway. “How is Laurie?”

“He’s good. The girls adore him,” Jo says absentmindedly. “Meg, how’s Amy?”

“She’s…” Meg trails off, and Jo prepares herself, “… never been better. She’s in the best state I’ve ever seen her in, Jo. Her art is fantastic. She has an exhibit next month at the Museum of Fine Arts, can you believe it?”

“That’s amazing.” Jo wants to cry. Amy is so much stronger than she will ever be. “She’s amazing.”

“She is,” Meg says. And then, after a beat, “Amy would be fine, you know. Happy, even.”

“What—”

“You and Laurie.” They don’t sound like Meg’s words at all; it’s as if Meg is reciting them, from something she’d heard someone else say. “It was only a matter of time before you finally caught up to his feelings, after all.”

“I can’t.” Jo shakes her head despite herself. “Amy—”

“Amy is the one who sent him to New York,” Meg breathes. There’s another pause, and Jo hears a distant scream in the background. “I think deep down, she always knew. Of course, Amy doesn’t blame you, Jo. It just… it wasn’t meant to be. This was the best thing for the both of them.”

“Meg, I think…” Jo says, her voice barely a whisper. Her eyes are stinging. “I think I lo—”

“Mommy’s coming!” Meg cries, away from the mouthpiece. “I’m so sorry, Jo. I have to go, okay? Demi’s making a fuss.” There’s a pause before she continues, “Amy loves you so much, Jo, despite what you think. And she’s strong. So strong.” She sighs. “Amy is _happy_. And she’d only want you to be happy, too, Jo.”

“Meg—”

“You’ll get an invitation to her exhibit soon. Come home if you can. It’s been too long.”

* * *

Sunday greets her with more rain. Jo thinks for a moment that New York may have been cursed at this point in time, and that it would always be grey and raining in the city from here on out. Her heart aches for the warm greenery of her hometown in Concord.

Sundays are usually spent outside; at the farmer’s market, picking out this week’s fruit that she can trade with Laurie at lunch in Bergamot, or at her favourite café, working on her writing, or in bookshops, roaming through the required reading for her students, or at Shakespeare in the Park during the summer. She steps out of her apartment and shivers in the cold drizzle.

Jo loves New York, but sometimes she doesn’t quite know what to do with herself out here, all alone. Sometimes she feels like a ghost wandering through the busy streets, waiting in limbo.

She pulls out her phone and glimpses Laurie’s name in her messages. They hadn’t spoken since that night, and Jo isn’t sure what she would say to him when she sees him tomorrow. She isn’t sure if she would be able say anything at all.

She rereads his last message. _Home. Thanks again for letting me stay last night._

 _Home._ Home.

Jo thinks of home and she sees the orchard behind Aunt March’s house that she would sometimes visit with her sisters. She sees their walk to the post office where they would eagerly wait for surprise packages from their father while he was away on business overseas. Their mother, and Hannah, cooking too much again so they’d had to bring the extra food next door; a gift, a peace offering. The four of them marching their way to Laurie’s, and Jo spending _far_ too much time in the library as she ran her fingers across the spines of the books, while her sisters roamed the rest of the house. Music filling the house as Beth comfortably settled herself at the piano. Amy, shrieking excitedly at the art scattered all around the house. Meg exchanging nervous looks with Mr. Brooke, much to Jo’s chagrin. Laurie, standing so close to her, never once leaving her side, oblivious to the whereabouts of the rest of the March sisters, his gaze fixed steadily on her. Laurie, visiting their house the very next day, as if he hadn’t _just_ seen her, with the sun in his smile and stars in his eyes. Laurie, always laying his love at his feet, so big but so patient, waiting for Jo to take it, and all the while she had been utterly and _completely_ blind.

Laurie. _Laurie._

Jo snaps back to reality and finds herself in Riverside Park, where she’d only been to once in the spring, after which she’d planned to go again but never did live up to the promise.

The trees are half-dead in the fall, and there are very few people around because there’s still a bit of rain, though Jo had been walking for nearly an hour in the rain now that it doesn’t really bother her as much as it did this morning.

She’s walking along a path between the larger trees when she sees him sitting alone on the riverbank. He’s wearing a red scarf; _her_ red scarf, the one she’d worn the first time they’d gone ice skating together, before it turned into a horror scene when Amy decided to tag along. Jo recognises it by the way the ends of the scarf are a little frayed, no matter how many times she’d huffed in annoyance as she tried to smooth them out, before he finally offered to take it off her hands.

Jo had told him to take good care of the scarf, because red is _her_ colour (and he’d known this from the moment they met, her dress as red as the evening glow of the room), and so it meant a lot for her to sacrifice the piece, and he’d sworn to keep it safe.

Jo _sees_ him, and her knees almost give way as it finally hits her. Loving Laurie has always been easy as breathing.

“Teddy,” she says. Her chest shakes along with the ground beneath her. “About the other night—”

“Jo,” Laurie begins, but doesn’t continue. The rain is relenting, and the sun is coming up slowly behind him.

“Teddy,” Jo tries again. The words had threatened to spill out from the moment she saw him. She realises they have always been there, on the corner of her lips, since that night. “Teddy, I—I meant what I said. I love you. I know that I’m five—ten—years too late…” Jo lets out a breathy laugh, “… God knows how late I am. I’m sorry. I’ve been—I’ve been blind, or stubborn, or just plain _stupid_ , but I’m realising now that I can’t go on with my life if you’re not in it.” It feels almost like a quote from a romantic film, or a love letter full of things unsaid, elaborate and clogged with sentiment. She is a writer, she has never lacked for words; yet Jo has always found it difficult to just _say_ how she feels. “I love you, Teddy. I love you, I love—”

His mouth catches hers, swallowing the rest of her words. He kisses her softly at first; tentative, uncertain, before her hands find their way around his shoulders and it turns hungry. He clutches her to him, and she leans in so close that their chests are touching, and for a moment she worries that they’re going to tip over into the river. But his grip on her is strong and sure, and his breath tastes so warm, and with her eyes closed the city melts away, and she can see them back in the field behind her home, rewriting the scene that took place.

When they pull away, they are both breathless. His cheeks are red, and she’s sure she can say the same for herself.

“Do you…” Laurie murmurs, pressing his forehead gently against hers. “Do you really mean it? You love me?”

“I do,” she says, closing her eyes. _I do. I do._

“I meant what I said, too, Jo,” Laurie says, and he can’t stop the laugh that escapes him. “I meant it years ago and I meant it the other night. It’s always been you.”

“I won’t marry,” Jo blurts, regretting it as soon as she says it. But it is something that needs to be said. “I mean—I don’t know if I can be the kind of wife you deserve. Or any kind of wife at all.”

“Jo, marriage…” he shakes his head, “… is honestly the last thing I want right now. I don’t want a wife. I want you. Just you.”

“Oh,” she breathes, and nods. “That’s good.”

Her lips find his this time, and there is truth in what they say; it’s always easier the second time around. They find a rhythm, a pattern, like they’d been doing this forever and not just moments ago. Laurie tells her he loves her again, breathes it into her, and Jo’s mouth is warm and tingling. She doesn’t know what’s to come next, and she can faintly feel her phone buzzing in her back pocket, but for now she doesn’t think about it. 

For now, Jo’s chest is pressing into his, her hands wrapping around his neck, her fingers twisting into his curls, and she is home.

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, the Jo/Laurie pairing is a hill that I have chosen to die on. I carry this suffering with me always. It is not pleasant and, while I adore their friendship and I actually like Amy/Laurie, my mind will always, _always_ drift back to Jo/Laurie and all that they could have been.
> 
> This fic is a result of watching the 2019 film about eighteen times last year, and realising that I will never _not_ cry at the scene on the hill. Seriously, I would play that scene over and over at work. Like, as background noise. Just listening to Laurie get rejected again and again. Like a try-not-to-cry challenge, or something. (I do not recommend this.) Essentially, I think, this fic is born from that whole 'you can't make homes out of people' notion. But in the case of Jo & Laurie, the question I raise is this: what if 'home' has always been that person, but you just never realised it?
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this. This fic has been in the works for more than two months; I could never really bring myself to finish it. But it felt like closure somewhat. By the end of it I also had Taylor Swift's "champagne problems" on repeat because, you know.
> 
> Title is taken from [“Lavender Hue” by Emma Bieniewicz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AksDgKUzG4s).


End file.
